Page 50

TOMMY

I tap my knuckles on Bitsy’s hospital room door while nurses wander by at my back, and the Plainview Gossip Vines continue to do that thing they do.

Phones ring, old people pass messages from one set of ears to the next, and my heart aches knowing that news of Bitsy’s hospital stint reaches me via the grapevines rather than the one person I’d rather hear from.

Carefully nudging the door open, I poke my head into the shadowed room and find Bitsy’s too-small, too-frail body dwarfed by a bed larger than her by double.

She’s barely sixty, but I swear she looks eighty.

They have her hooked up to wires and machines, an IV hanging above her bed, and plastic tubes that trail down to feed liquid into her veins.

Seeing her weak and dying, compared to the strong and vicious I spent nearly thirty years knowing, makes my throat burn.

It makes my heart stutter and my lips dry, so I lick them and cast my eyes further toward a silent Franky, sitting in a visitor’s chair with an old-school Gameboy held between his hands and his feet comfortably tucked on the chair, his knees pointing toward the ceiling.

Then I look at Alana. The bags under her eyes and the pale coloring on her cheeks. Hair tied in a messy ponytail, and fatigue etched into her every feature.

She’s exhausted, and instead of calling me last night and asking for support, she decided to handle the ambulance and EMT on her own. She escorted her mother here, alone. And spent the night sitting beside her bed, alone.

“Hey.” She attempts to smile. That’s who she is, isn’t it? Pretending everything is okay when it’s really not. But when I stay put, she dips her chin. “You can come in. It’s alright.”

Swallowing, I drag my hat off and step into the room, then I move to the side and wait for Chris to follow.

“Both of you?” Alana’s eyes flicker with faux happiness, but the fakery makes way for real when Franky flips around in his chair, setting his game aside and grinning for my brother.

He doesn’t really give a shit that I’m here. But Chris…

“Must be a special occasion,” Alana murmurs. “Both Watkins at the same time, even though it’s the middle of the day.”

“You wanna come for a walk with me, Franky?” Chris wanders across and stops in front of the boy. “I don’t know about you, but hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies, and last I heard, you’ve been here since last night. Wanna get a snack?”

He swings back around to search Alana’s eyes.

“Of course, baby.” Listlessly, she releases her mom’s hand and leans to the side of her chair. “Let me get you some cash so you can?—”

“We’re not broke anymore.” Quietly chuckling, Chris presses his hand to the back of Franky’s hair and guides him through the door. “Not gonna nickel and dime you for the price of a pack of gum, Page. Come on. Let’s see if we can find some wheelchairs. We’ll race ‘em in the halls.”

Once they’re gone, Alana rights herself in her chair, lifting her feet to the cushion and folding her arms. She’s hiding from me, which is something only this adult after-New-York version of her does. Before, when we were younger, she would have come to me first .

And I figure she’s thinking the same thing, because she nibbles on her pinky nail and looks anywhere but into my eyes.

“You could have called me, Lana.” I want to walk around the bed and scoop her into my arms. Force her to love me. Beg her to rely on me. But I go to Franky’s abandoned chair instead, dragging it a little closer to Bitsy and setting the game by her leg.

Sitting, I rest my elbows on the bed, too, and my chin in my hands. But I don’t even look at the old woman who lies between us.

She doesn’t need me the way her child does.

“You didn’t want me to know?”

“I didn’t have time to think,” she rasps. “I didn’t want to bother you. ”

“Bother me,” I bite out. I sit back, open my legs wide, and search her eyes.

The tears that glisten in her lashes and the sadness that envelops her every thought.

Every feeling. Then I pat my thigh and breathe easier when she drops her feet and dashes around the bed.

Her breath catches. Her shoulders and back bouncing with emotions she won’t verbalize.

She sits on my lap for the first time in ten long years, curling into my chest and tucking her head under my chin.

And when I wrap her in my arms and squeeze, she releases the sob she’s been holding on to since last night.

“You must be so tired.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Did you sleep at all?”

“No.” She slides her hand beneath my shirt and rests her fingertips over my heart. It’s the old her from before life tore us apart, when she knew she could come to me and I’d make everything better. “Franky slept for a while.”

“How’s he coping?”

“Okay.” She sighs when I stroke her thigh, breathing perhaps for the first time since she discovered her mother unresponsive on the kitchen floor. Yeah, I got that from the gossip vines, too . “As long as I’m calm, he’s calm. As long as it’s quiet, he’s okay.”

“Which is good for him. But it means you’ve locked everything up since last night.

” I draw patterns against her thigh. Pictures.

Words. Love . “You can let it all go while he’s gone, Lana.

Let it out, so when he’s back, you can be strong again.

” I lay a kiss on her forehead. “What’s happening with Bitsy? ”

“They’re not expecting her to wake up.” She chokes on her tears, bouncing against my chest and whimpering when I simply pull her closer.

Tighter. “Ollie came by about an hour ago. He said she’s already signed directives that meant, in the event she ended up here, like this, he could tell me everything. ”

“And?”

“It started in her lungs and traveled to…” she moans. “All over. Everywhere. He gave her six months to live… six months ago.”

“Fuck.” I bring my hand up and cup her face, crushing her against my chest so maybe she’ll hear my heart. Maybe she’ll feel it. “I’m so sorry. I know things are complicated between you two, but that doesn’t make the pain go away.”

“He said she refused treatment around the start of the year. That she wanted to spend her time with her friends instead and with me and Franky.” Tears burst free of her soul, drenching her face and rocking her chest. “She asked us to come home, Tommy, and it was easy to see she wasn’t well.

But I didn’t know it was so bad, and the whole time, we argued. ”

“ She knew.” I drag her face up and search her eyes. “She knew, Lana, and she still did things the way she did. Maybe she wanted the real you and not a fake everyone-has-to-be-nice-to-the-dying-lady show.”

“I don’t think we had a single kind conversation since I got to town.” Her voice breaks. “Every time we talked, we bickered.”

“If she wanted something different, she would have asked.” I slide my thumb beneath her eye and clean away the tears. Useless, really, when more follow. “She asked you to come, and you did. That’s what matters.”

“I called her a self-absorbed jerk before we left the house last night.” She strokes my chest, thoughtlessly massaging the muscle where our ink sits. “She said I was selfish and stupid for bringing Franky to your home for dinner since it was clear I would only pack up and leave again eventually.”

My worst fears. The very thoughts that keep me awake at night.

“I told her to mind her own damn business. Then we went out anyway when we could have stayed home and eaten with her.”

“You didn’t know.” I tilt her head back and force her to look into my eyes. “Baby, you didn’t know.”

“It’s like she brought us home just to torment me one last time,” she whimpers. “We’re not here because she wanted to spend time with us. She did it so she could hurt me again.”

“Did she treat Franky badly? Did she hurt him?”

“No, she?—”

“Maybe she realized her mistakes as a mom. She knows where she went wrong, and she wishes she could change it. So she called you back and gave Franky what she couldn’t give you.”

“She hated me because I reminded her of the man who left. Because he got to travel and do whatever he wanted, while she was stuck here in Plainview with an ungrateful daughter and no way to escape.”

“Lana…”

“I hate her.” She crushes her eyes closed and weeps. “Because it wasn’t my fault he left. It wasn’t my fault he didn’t want us. And most of all, I hate her because she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive me for the things that were never my fault.”

I rest my lips on her forehead. Kissing. Feeling. Comforting, maybe. And when her cries grow louder, I rock us back and forth. “You deserved better, Lana. You always did.”